Yet it is not possible to abandon the conviction that the words and the acts of God cannot really be at variance. Before surrendering His words contained in the Scripture, as either spurious or misunderstood, no effort can be too often reiterated to show them to be compatible with what we have learned of His works. I propose to make one more such effort, based on the closest examination of what both really tell, or imply. Let us first understand accurately what it is we are to deal with, both as facts and as expressed in language. The inquiry is to be limited (with exceptions which will be noted as they occur) to the laws of matter. It will be assumed that matter exists as our ordinary perceptions inform us, but if it shall hereafter be proved to be only a form of motion, or of force, the arguments will still be applicable. By laws, we shall understand what in a different expression we call the properties of matter. The advantage of thus explaining law is that it excludes some other senses of a vague and misleading character, while it includes the sense in which alone law can properly be applied to physical nature. Thus, the law of gravity is the same thing as the property of matter which we call weight, and if there be any matter or ether which is imponderable, then the law of gravity does not apply to it. So the law of attraction, in its different forms, expresses the property of cohesion, and of capillary ascent, and so on; the law of chemical affinities expresses the property of the combination of one species of matter with another in definite proportions; the laws of sound, light, or electricity express the properties of vibrations, either of air or of subtler forms of matter, as they affect our senses. In thus limiting the meaning of law, it is therefore obvious that we embrace all which the materialist can desire to include when he insists that law is permanent and unchangeable.